


On the Run and Go

by CatLovePower



Series: I'll Stay Awake [2]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Trench (Album), Blood and Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magical Realism, Road Trips, Supernatural Elements, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-25 09:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: Tyler is free from the coffee shop known as DEMA, but the ghost of Nico is still poisoning his mind. So Tyler and Josh embark on a road trip to get some answers and maybe kill a man.





	On the Run and Go

**Author's Note:**

> Second part of my DEMA-verse / coffee-shop AU, but the coffee shop has burned down.

  
Mark barges in Josh’s tent – their tent – one morning and Tyler can’t help but jump. He’s still wary around Banditos; he’s slowly learning to trust people, but there are physical reactions he can’t control. He’s not even sure it’s morning; time moves slow when he’s with Josh. Not because he’s stopping it, he’s not doing that anymore, but because Josh puts his mind at ease, in a way he can’t explain.  
  
Tyler realizes he’s lost in thought and staring at Josh’s brown curls, just above his left ear, instead of paying attention to whatever Mark had to say. He knows Josh is listening for the both of them. He’s clingy, and his mind is sick, but Josh has his back, always. The other boy grasps his arm, clearly excited by what Mark just told them, and Tyler flinches some more, cursing himself internally.  
  
“He found him!” Tyler hears Josh repeat, and he frowns because he doesn’t remember Banditos looking for anyone.  
  
Until it hits him. _Him_. Nico. They found him. He’s shaking, and he can feel Josh’s hand on his arm, reassuring, warm and real, but he can also feel Nico’s cold black hands on his throat, the hands of a ghost long gone – he killed him, he knows he did – and he’s coming apart.  
  
Josh is talking to him, over and over, but he doesn’t even hear what he’s saying, not with the blood rushing to his head and drowning the outside world. He feels DEMA calling for him, pulling him back, and he wishes he would just pass out.  
  
He doesn’t. Josh holds him with a scared expression, and Mark is nowhere to be seen. When Tyler looks around the cramped tent, all he can see are books and papers and a broken lamp, scattered on the tarp floor.  
  
“Yeah, you sort of did that,” Josh confirms in a breath.  
  
Tyler doesn’t know what is scarier, the lack of control, the fact that he doesn’t even remember throwing a telekinetic tantrum, or Josh absolute, unwavering trust.

|-/

Night is falling and the camp is mostly desert. The air is cold, with a lingering smell of burned plastic. It smells like home in a way it definitely shouldn’t. Josh is gone (somewhere with Mark?), plotting, deciding, being a clever rebel – and Tyler is left behind, feeling sorry for himself. People keep telling him that he’s not a burden, but he kind of is. What has he contributed to, since he came to Trench?  
  
Sometimes he misses the simplicity of his life in DEMA, and he hates himself for even thinking that. The outside world feels too vast and too unpredictable. Now he’s drunk on freedom, scared out of his head most of the time. And he’s just standing there with a crazy mind to clean, keeping everyone away, refusing to give them his demons.  
  
People come back from day jobs, from vandalism expeditions, from daily riots in the town center. They light fires and the camp comes alive, while Tyler retreats into his head. The flames stir disturbing memories of screams and charred flesh, and in the shadows his hands look black, glistening in the cold night, covered in blood. He blinks and turns them palms up in from of him, wondering if plunging them into the fire would fix them.  
  
He must have looked sick, because next thing he knows, Jenna is sitting next to him, as close as she can without touching him. He likes Jenna, because she always speaks her mind, even when it hurts. She doesn’t make him feel fragile, like the rest of them.  
  
“Did you hear the news?” she asks, a smile in her voice.  
  
Good news, Tyler thinks – but the only news he’s aware of is about DEMA, so he shrugs, waiting for her to elaborate.  
  
“Mark tracked down...” her voice trails off, and she looks uncertain, for a second. Shadows move on her face and make her look older than she is. “He tracked _them_ down. We’re thinking of making a move in a day or so.” She briefly squeezes his arm in a gesture that is supposed to be comforting.  
  
Tyler sort of understands the reasoning behind all that – they are fighting capitalism, hurting the rich and denouncing the corrupt. It only makes sense that they would try and come after his old boss, for being a capitalist vampire and for hurting him for so long. But it also makes no sense at all to risk everything they have right now. He’s not sure he’s brave enough to face Nico again after he literally set him ablaze along with the whole coffee shop.  
  
“Who would you die for?” he asks, instead of voicing his concerns, because more often than not, it’s easier to be cryptic and let everyone try and decide by themselves what he means.  
  
Jenna seems to ponder the question, and her eyebrows scrunch up.  
  
“And would you ever kill?” he insists, with a note of desperation.  
  
What he wants to convey is how terribly afraid he is that Josh, or any of the Banditos, would do something unforgivable for little old him – something irrational and dangerous like attempting to kill Nico. He is the only one who should have blood on his hands. He raises them slightly for Jenna to see, as if to make his point, but Jenna doesn’t see the blood, she doesn’t get it. She just pulls him into a hug. He melts into the embrace, and it feels like falling.

|-/

There are talks, and councils, and plans. Tyler doesn’t mean to sleepwalk through it all. He really doesn’t mean to wake up in a car – no, a van – somewhere in the countryside, with Josh behind the wheel and melted snow on the windshield.  
  
He is slumped in the passenger seat, buckled up and dressed in warm clothes he doesn’t remember. It should freak him out but it doesn’t, and he just hopes the ride lasts forever.  
  
Josh is staring ahead, his face serious but his body relaxed. If they are on the warpath, they are still far away from the battlefield. The yellow in his hair has nearly disappeared. Only the tip of some longer strands still shows some color, like a vestige of a past self. He’s been growing a beard and it suits him; it’s proof that time is not totally standing still.  
  
Tyler knows he should speak more, open up, but it seems physically impossible. He’s scared that if he starts talking, all the horrors locked inside his head will spill out and attack. So he just pretends he’s still asleep and he lets the world rush by.

|-/

Josh stops at a diner along the road. Some old 50s-themed restaurant with a few trucks parked outside, and blinking neon signs in the windows. Tyler stirs, and they get out of the van without a word; they don’t need to speak, they’re both hungry. When they push the door, a few people eye them suspiciously, but Tyler is too tired to care. They quickly sit down at a booth and order.  
  
“Where are we going?” Tyler asks.  
  
Josh looks at him with a frown, as if he’s trying to decide if he should be concerned or not. He must have told him already, maybe several times even. Tyler half expects him to re-affirm that they are going to kill Nico and any henchmen that gets on their way, but instead Josh sighs and says, “It was getting too dangerous, in town.”  
  
And Tyler tries to focus on his words, he really does. Dangerous why, for whom? So many questions he probably already asked, before forgetting all about it.  
  
“The police was going to raid the camp. We had to move. You… weren’t taking it well.”  
  
Oh. Sounds plausible, Tyler thinks.  
  
“So you put me in a van and drove away? Very sketchy,” Tyler teases.  
  
Josh laughs, and crinkles appear around his eyes. It’s beautiful.  
  
“Please, say that even louder,” he says, but he doesn’t sound mad.  
  
Tyler tries to eat, but the fries are already cold. Time moves too fast outside the city, or maybe he’s just too slow. Silence stretches, and they let the quiet conversations of the other patrons wash over them.  
  
“What about…” Tyler hesitates, so he looks at Josh, hoping he doesn’t need words.  
  
“I know where he is,” Josh says with a frown. “But I didn’t think we should go there.”  
  
And Tyler doesn’t know what to say to that, because last he remembers, Banditos were about to launch a raid, and now they’re all alone in the middle of nowhere. He must have looked disappointed, or just very confused, because Josh adds, “But we can.”  
  
The fries in Tyler’s mouth feel like straw and he has a hard time swallowing. The air gets thinner, and the lights brighter, when they talk about _him_. As if he was able to physically manifest around them to torture Tyler some more. He knows it’s just in his head, and he wishes he could drown the feeling with coffee laced with drugs, but he doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore. He puts his hand on top of Josh’s on the table, and he says, “I’ve been thinking too much. Help me.”  
  
Josh is becoming good at decoding Tyler’s speech, because in his eyes, Tyler can read understanding, fear, and determination. Maybe that’s what they call love. Trusting someone who sputters non sense on a daily basis. Watching them struggle and just being there when they need it. He feels warmth, somewhere in his chest, like some inner light he didn’t know he had.  
  
“We’ll go.” 

|-/ 

Road trips are boring, Tyler decides after a while. For one thing, he knows he can’t drive. He watches Josh, and the idea of controlling a metal box on wheels on an icy road sends shudders down his spine. He could pull the steering wheel. Wrap them around a tree. He blinks and tries to forget about it.  
  
Speaking takes all his energy, but he tries, so hard. But most of the time, he just listens to Josh. There are so many books and movies that he knows nothing about; sometimes it feels like Josh is inventing crazy stories on the spot, but he wouldn’t lie to him. They should get a television, Tyler suggests, and Josh laughs because only lies come out of it, and they don’t have electricity at the camp. But they both know what Tyler meant. After, in another life, a normal life.  
  
They stop along the road and use stolen cards to get gas or snacks. Sometimes Josh pretends to hit on the cashier while Tyler steals stuff. He’s good at it, and the warm feeling expands in Tyler’s chest, even if none of the words are directed at him.  
  
They don’t really speak about important stuff; Tyler knows they should formulate a plan. They should come with back up. Weapons. Information. All they have is each other and a beaten down van. And for some reason if feels enough. Or maybe they do have serious conversations, and Tyler just forgets about them, like the rest.  
  
At one point they cross state lines, and Josh gets out to change the plates. They’re in a gangster movie, and Tyler wishes he could enjoy it more. Dread is still there, in the back of his mind, telling him it’s a trap.  
  
“I’d take a bullet for you,” he tells Josh out of the blue, while sitting in the open trunk, his feet barely touching the ground.  
  
Josh raises his head and scoffs, “I’d rather you didn’t.”  
  
They both remember how Tyler was able to dodge flying objects and make them pass straight through him. In retrospect, it might not be the best proof of love.  
  
“I’d live for you,” Josh says instead, before ducking his head again and focusing on the screwdriver.  
  
He doesn’t elaborate, but Tyler knows. He has always known; how important he is to Josh, and how close past-Josh has been to giving up. And the warmth keeps growing in his chest.

|-/

There are so many trees out there, so much snow. It’s silent, and the sky is too big, at night. So it’s only logical that Tyler tries to hide into Josh’s chest. They sleep in the back of the van, tangled together because it’s cramped, cold, but also because it feels right and neither of them see a problem with it. Part of him wonders if the Banditos are alright, if the camp was destroyed, leaving them homeless with no place to return to. And part of him really doesn’t care because he’s already home.  
  
In the morning Tyler can feel his breath, solid in the frigid air. He can feel his death. He grabs onto Josh until he wakes up, and sees him, and says, “Hello,” and that’s the most beautiful sound in the world.  
  
They don’t talk about it, because what’s the point in one-way conversations Tyler probably won’t remember the next day. He’s afraid to ask how many days they’ve been on the road. It still feels like falling, but maybe it’s supposed to. So he takes his time and focuses on moments, instead of the whole ride. 

|-/

They reach the outskirts of a small town with low buildings and dirty snow on each side of the road, and Tyler knows this is it. He feels drawn to a beacon of darkness, he feels like sanity is slowly slipping away and he’s running behind it, too slow, too far away. Josh knows something is wrong as well, because he becomes more distant, warier around him.  
  
They’re driving down the main street, and it feels like deja-vu all over again. A sad building with four letters they know too well painted across the windows; DEMA rose from the ashes and re-localized to another town. Josh drives by without stopping, and Tyler feels like opening the door and flinging himself out of the van.  
  
It’s real, it’s there, and they don’t have a plan, as far as Tyler knows. Josh finds a motel that is cheap enough and he runs one of their stolen cards, hoping it didn’t get flagged. The manager gives them a key and makes a lewd comment under his breath, but Tyler is sinking and he couldn’t care less what people think of them.  
  
He lets himself fall onto the queen size bed with ratty covers and stares at the humidity stain on the off white ceiling. Like a magician, Josh has produced a cellphone out of thin air and is currently plugging it in to charge. Tyler didn’t think he had one, but maybe Jenna or someone forced him to take it. Someone flushes in another room, and he can hear water running in the pipes, rattling in the wall.  
  
This place feels damp and gross in ways the back of the van wasn’t, but it’s the least of his worries at the moment. DEMA is still standing, which means people are still slaving away in there. Customers are still drinking it up, and nobody gives a damn.  
  
“What now?” Josh asks when he comes out of the bathroom, his hair still wet.  
  
Tyler doesn’t remember falling asleep or Josh taking a shower; time is escaping him. Josh sits on the bed, and scoots over until their thighs touch. Tyler uses that point of contact as an anchor, and tries not to unravel. Josh is real, Josh is solid and warm. Tyler’s voice won’t work, so he hums what sounds like a question, and keeps his eyes on the stain on the ceiling.  
  
“We should check it out. Maybe it’s a normal place,” Josh says, not believing his own words.  
  
Tyler makes a disapproving noise. The stain is not growing, but the migraine in his head is pulsating. Shadows are screaming that he’s alone, so he grabs Josh’s arm and doesn’t let go. Maybe Josh can feel that he’s already waging a war behind his face. Maybe he just thinks he’s lost and scared – he is. And so they lie side by side for a moment that is neither long nor short – an infinite instant out of time – until Josh’s phone beeps.  
  
Josh gently unclasps Tyler’s fingers from his arm, and retrieves the small phone from the floor. He calls someone, Tyler can hear the call going through, and then the mechanical voice of an answering machine.  
  
“We’re there,” Josh says. “We’re going in tonight.” (Are they?)  
  
He gives the address of the motel, before hanging up. Tyler doesn’t know what good it could do for Banditos to know their whereabouts if it took several days to drive there. Or maybe they were going in circles in the forest. Maybe they never left and he dreamed of the whole escape. Maybe…  
  
“Shh, breathe with me,” Josh says.  
  
The hand is on his thigh, and Tyler squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to hyperventilate. His heart feels too big in his chest, like a fluttering bird struggling to escape. Josh purposefully slows his breathing and Tyler tries to match it. 

|-/

DEMA is still the same, even if the town and building are different. The lightning and the music and the people and the smells. It’s nearly too much, and Tyler stays frozen at the door for a second, trying to decide if he’s going to bolt or to puke. He does neither, and stays glued to Josh, who walks in like he owns the place. Tyler knows he’s terrified and it’s only fake bravado, but the illusion is perfect.  
  
A young woman takes their order, cheerful and polite. Behind her, a middle aged man starts making the drinks, and when he sees him, Tyler’s breathing hitches. But then he turns around, and they can see it’s not Nico. They sit at a booth near the window, and watch the rain turn into snow as the night falls.  
  
When Josh takes a sip of his latte, Tyler has to squeeze his hands into fists to refrain from knocking the cup of out his hand. He keeps his eyes on Josh, trying to check his reaction. He smiles and raises a thumb, because it’s good – but that’s how they hook you, with a false sense of security and overly sweet drinks. Thankfully, Josh doesn’t drink anymore and lets the cup grow cold while they observe the other customers.  
  
After a while, Tyler concludes that there is nothing to see, and he’s either crazy, or the evil of the place is well hidden. For some reason it feels better than it was in plain sight. So they stay until closing time, not really talking. Josh folds napkins into little animals, and Tyler drowns them in his cup until the paper turns into a brown pulp.  
  
And then, they slip around the back and wait in the van. It’s cold and scary, and Tyler sits on his hands to keep from fidgeting. Lights go out inside. Employees close the shop and go. They wait, and wait some more, until Josh whispers, “Let’s go.”  
  
He gets ski masks out of the back of the van, and Tyler makes a face when the scratchy wool encloses his face. It feels suffocating. It feels empowering. “Let’s go,” he repeats.

|-/

Breaking in takes two minutes top. The back door has a simple lock, and Josh picks it while Tyler stands there, frozen in place with a lamp torch in one hand and a bat in the other. It’s Josh’s bat. Tyler doesn’t need weapons, he feels like an unpinned grenade most of the time. He watches Josh’s fingers work, long and agile, very unlike his own, and it looks like magic. And then the door opens, revealing a dark corridor. Josh retrieves the bat and goes in first, while Tyler closes the door behind them.  
  
He peels the mask off as soon as they’re in, regardless of possible cameras, because it’s either that or passing out from the lack of oxygen. If he notices, Josh doesn’t comment. Tyler hopes Josh knows what they are doing, because he is that close to losing his mind. He can hear Nico calling for him, somewhere deep under the building, and he hopes the voices are just in his head, even if it’s a depressing thought.  
  
The kitchen is desert and quiet. Bottles of chlorine are lined up on the counter, and coffee beans sit on the floor in big jute bags. The resemblance with the DEMA Tyler knows is unsettling; he shoves the memories it brings up in a deep corner of his mind and nods when Josh looks at him expectantly. He’s okay; his hands shake so much he nearly drops the torch, but he’s okay.  
  
It’s Tyler who finds the door to the basement, because he can hear his way around. That staircase didn’t exist in his version of the shop, maybe he was so drugged up that he never noticed. Tyler goes first, because he’s the one holding the light and he doesn’t want Josh to trip and break his neck, but he also doesn’t want to let go of the torch and be in the dark.  
  
Ten steps. Dusty floor and boxes stacked upon boxes. There must be a second door somewhere, of this he’s sure. He turns back to illuminate the stairs. The dark rectangle of the door is mocking him from above, and Josh is nowhere to be found. Tyler panics and fumbles around, but all he can see are supplies and old chairs.  
  
“Josh!”  
  
It’s stupid to make a noise, but he can’t help the strangled scream that escapes his throat. Grown men don’t vanish without a sound. Something happened. Something bad. He runs up the stairs, takes a left turn and collides with a wall. He falls back and drops the torch, but the wall turns into a mountain of a man, and when the lights flick on, Tyler finds himself facing a gun. So he stays on the floor, half sitting, half lying, and he thinks that maybe he should raise his hands, but his body feels paralyzed. He’s like a rabbit when the dog finally catches up with it.  
  
He belatedly realizes he’s crying when tears reach his collar, and snot makes it hard to breathe. The security guard scoffs and holds a beefy hand to help him up. He warily accepts it, and next thing he knows, he’s shoved against the wall, with an arm twisted up in his back and the other uncomfortably trapped in front of him. Tears of pain join the previous ones.  
  
“I don’t know what you were expecting to find down there, ain’t nothing but dust and stuff.”  
  
The guard breathes down his neck and it smells like whiskey and cigarettes. Tyler shudders and stifles a cry when he feels like his shoulder might pop out of its socket. He tries to explain, but words won’t cooperate, and he ends up repeating broken pleas about Josh’s whereabouts.  
  
“I didn’t see anyone,” the guard says, and he sounds pissed, either because he thinks Tyler is lying, or because he might have missed something.  
  
“Please,” Tyler says, but he doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t know what he’s pleading for. He just wants Josh. And to kill Nico, but he’s not going to say that out loud.  
  
The guard frogmarches him into a small office they overlooked – Tyler could have sworn it wasn’t there earlier, but he’s doubting his own mind on a daily basis – and throws him into a chair. Tyler rubs at his arm and glares. He’s half expecting the bigger man to start punching him, because that’s what Nico would have done, but this time he’s not drugged out of his mind, and he’s ready to fight – sort of. Metaphorically, he’s the man, but literally he doesn’t know what he’d do.  
  
But the guard sits down and doesn’t touch him. He keeps the gun pointed in his general direction, but fumbles with the office phone, taking his time, like he doesn’t believe such a sad excuse for a gangster would put up much of a fight. Tyler observes him through misty eyes, and he thinks that’s his chance, right there. The guard is overweight, he has a good eighty pounds on him, he can probably outrun him. He can’t sit around waiting for the police or worse to arrive. He has to find Josh.  
  
So he jumps out of his chair and runs to the door, hoping the exit is clear. But he doesn’t even reach the corridor, as the guard lunges and grabs the collar of his jacket, slamming him into the wall, much more violently than before. His nose makes a crunching sound, and he slides to the floor, dazed.   
  
He can hear the guard hovering, heavy and menacing, but he can’t raise his head to look at him. His brain is leaking. He tries to turn around, to stand up, but his limbs won’t cooperate.  
  
“You little–” the guard groans, but he never finishes his sentence. A chair crashes into his back and he topples over at Tyler’s feet.  
  
“Wh–” Tyler mumbles. He can feel blood flowing from his nose, down his throat, and he chokes on his words.  
  
Josh, beautiful, terrified Josh stands over the guard and bends down to retrieve the gun from his lax hand. He looks like he can’t believe what he just did. The corridor lights hurt Tyler’s eyes, and he shuts them, hoping it won’t make Josh disappear.  
  
“Tyler? Tyler, answer me,” Josh’s panicked voice finally cuts through the buzzing in Tyler’s head, and he blindly tries to cling to him. There is a hand on his back, soothing, solid.  
  
“You were gone,” he accuses, but it comes out jumbled and he spits blood on the floor.  
  
“You… you did something,” Josh says, unsure.  
  
At that, Tyler opens an eye and lets him drag him back to his feet. He’s shaky, and his nose won’t stop bleeding. He raises a hand to inspect the damage, but Josh swats it away. They start to move toward the exit, and Tyler closes his eyes again because the lights are burning a hole in his brain.  
  
“I think you protected me,” Josh says. And it makes no sense, this whole debacle happened because Josh disappeared, but… “I was at the top of the stairs, and then I was several rooms away. I heard you scream, I heard you struggle with the guard.”  
  
Tyler stays silent, but he knows that Josh is right. He did something. He hates himself for that. The lack of control is frightening. He could have hurt Josh. He was not even aware… Josh must hear him think because he squeezes his arm, looped around his shoulders to help him stay up.  
  
“I’m okay,” Josh assures, leaving no room for debate.  
  
Tyler hopes the guard is alive. He hopes his nose isn’t crooked. And he hopes he never materializes Josh inside a wall.

|-/

Tyler doesn’t remember passing out in the van. He thankfully doesn’t remember Josh resetting his nose. Ghost tendrils of pain are still hooked behind his eyes, but the ice Josh brought back helped a little. It’s currently melting on his face, and dripping onto the comforter.  
  
“Mark called,” Josh tells him.  
  
He’s sitting on the bed, just a little too far from comfort, like he’s scared of him – and Tyler doesn’t know if it’s because he thinks he’s broken or dangerous. Probably both.  
  
“He said going in was reckless and stupid, his words. He says the guard is not dead,” he adds, and Tyler thinks there is relief in his voice, which doesn’t make sense because…  
  
“I thought we were killing Nico,” Tyler says, and he tastes blood when he pronounces the name.  
  
He tries to sit up, but his head is spinning, and he hates that Josh doesn’t help him. So he gives up and talks to the stain on the ceiling instead.  
  
“I can’t take them on my own. I don’t wanna hand you all my trouble...” he trails, because Josh still hasn’t said anything. “But I’ll need you to stay.”  
  
“Always,” Josh affirms, after a silence too long for comfort.  
  
Tyler knows he means it – sadly, thankfully. The pulsing heat in his heart matches the pain in his head, and he falls asleep without meaning it, only to dream of blood and black hands trying to snatch Josh away.

|-/

Later – how much later, Tyler can’t tell, as the snow makes everything look dead and cold, and time stands still – they’re driving on an icy road, and the trees are as silent as ever. He should be asking questions, but he’s too tired to bring himself to, and too wary of Josh’s answers. Are they running away from danger, or to a certain death? Are they the dog or the rabbit? And where is Nico? He started calling him by his name again, in his head; but the name still holds too much power to be said out loud too often, like it could conjure him up.  
  
“Talk to me,” Josh says, and Tyler wishes he could, but nothing makes enough sense to be said.  
  
“There’s an infestation in my mind’s imagination,” he blurts out after a pit stop at a gas station.  
  
Josh nods like he understands, but Tyler doubts he does. They’ve been on the same road for days now, and they keep circling around the same town (or is it a different one each time?), and DEMA is always there, a dark epicenter of evil, calling him, taunting him.  
  
“We need to smoke them out,” Josh states, later that night.  
  
And he means it literally because there are plastic cans full of petrol in the back of the van that weren’t there earlier. Or maybe they have always been there, and the fumes are slowly making them crazier than they were before. Tyler hums while he looks at the blurry trees outside, thinking how the snowflakes are as scattered as his thoughts right now.  
  
The bruise from his nose slowly relocates under his eyes, and it gives him two black eyes. It must look bad because he catches people staring, sometimes, when they stop to grab a bite to eat. Nobody confronts them directly but it feels like some of them want to, and he can hear whispering behind his back.  
  
In rare moments of lucidity, he hopes Josh doesn’t get reported for assault and battery, or worse. Tyler lets him guide him and support him; he lets him answer in his place. He’s too lethargic to function. It’s like his batteries are so low his body is shutting everything down, turning him into a barely walking zombie, while the battle still rages inside his mind.

|-/

They drive and they eat and they sleep. Nothing feels real anymore, until Tyler wakes up on the side of the road, cold to the bone, with no memory of how he got there. His jacket is torn in places and he pats himself, half expecting wounds but finding none. His tattooed arm hurts and his head doesn’t feel right – but when does it ever. He looks at his shoes half buried in the snow, and he can’t feel his toes. Drops of blood fall and he sniffles, then wipes his nose on his sleeve.  
  
The sun is setting and the trees are too tall, menacing, or maybe he’s just too small. He hopes Josh is looking for him because he’s not sure he can save himself. His feet are made of lead but they still carry him into town. One that looks like all the towns they drove through or stopped at.  
  
Suddenly, the forest and its silence are long gone. He nearly gets run over when he crosses the street, and everything comes back into focus, too fast and too loud. Someone shouts at him, and he wishes he still had the woolen ski mask, if only to stop the wind from hurting his face.  
  
He was expecting the coffee shop to be lit and attractive as ever, like a modern tale of sirens calling men lost at sea, only using promotional offers and fancy names for regular drinks. But the shop is closed, dark and silent, with a sad foreclosure banner hanging off askew. It can’t be, he thinks. It’s a ploy, it’s a trap. He can hear voices calling, demons yelling. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s banging both fists on the wooden door, on the plexiglass windows, until his frozen fingers hurt fiercely and his arms start to ache.  
  
He doesn’t see passersby gawking at him, he doesn’t hear people calling the police. He’s demanding answers because nothing makes sense anymore. His throat feels raw, he must have been screaming. Night falls, with gravity, the earth turns, from sanity.  
  
And then strong hands wrap around his torso and peel him off the closed shop windows. He trashes and scratches, his feet scraping the pavement, but he’s not strong enough. He gives up and lets himself be pulled away. A shout, a voice he knows. They’re running, and he would face plant if it wasn’t for the unrelenting grip on his arm. He has bruises there he knows, shaped as a hand. Five fingers etched onto the skin, like a tattoo.  
  
They reach a dark alleyway and Tyler tries to catch his breath, thinking that’s where they’ll mug him and leave him for dead behind the dumpsters. The hands on his body turn him around roughly, and he gets slapped across the face. His cheek is stinging and he’s still trying to process what happened when arms pull him into a tight hug and don’t let go. He huffs and stops moving, stops struggling, stops thinking.  
  
“You need to stop doing that,” Josh says, his voice low, somewhere into his shoulder. “You need to let us help.”  
  
“I’m twisted up, inside my mind,” Tyler whispers, and he lets Josh catch him when he falls.

|-/

Banditos have assembled headquarters of sorts, a secondary camp in the woods, in the middle of who knows where. Trench is everywhere now, under the night’s sky. People are talking, and Tyler can’t keep track, can’t focus long enough for words to really mean something. He hears bits of sentences, conversations he doesn’t feel privy to, whispers and concerns. From what he can gather, it’s not the first time he vanished and ended up wandering about. It’s not the first time DEMA called and he came running.  
  
There is tea, and fire, and hugs. He should hate it all, but he craves it, clinging to anyone patient enough to let him.  
  
“That’s the third time,” Josh says, and Tyler tries to pay attention, he really does. Josh’s hair is yellow again, and his beard is gone, and just how much time did he lose?  
  
“About a week, give or take,” Josh says. Maybe he can read minds. Tyler used to be able to, but he can’t focus anymore, not outside DEMA.  
  
“You’re muttering,” Josh says. “Thinking out loud.”  
  
“My brain has given up,” Tyler states, and his voice feels rough with lack of use. “I’m terrified of what’s around the corner.”  
  
“But you’re not alone,” Josh soothes.  
  
Tyler is looking at the camp, trying to recognize faces, but drawing a blank. Everything feels forgotten and fake, as the trees await and clouds anticipate. He would break down and cry if it didn’t sound like a taxing activity in itself.  
  
“He’s dead, you know,” Josh adds out of the blue, and it jolts Tyler back to the present. It can’t be. He’d remember.  
  
“I killed a man?” Tyler repeats, as if it would make it more true. He shakes his head in silent denial.  
  
“We sabotaged several franchises. We made DEMA fall in many towns.” And it sounds like fantasy, like the plot of a movie Tyler never saw.  
  
Josh lifts a hand to cup Tyler’s face and gently force him look at him, and he says again, slowly, deliberately, “Nico is dead.”  
  
Tears never fall, but all the pain comes crashing, and the forgotten warmth somewhere in his chest sets his bones ablaze. The hand on his chin is not letting go, and he uses it as a point of entry to pass on what he wants to say. _Be mine. Kiss me_. And Josh does. Soft and hesitant, because it wasn’t entirely his decision. The tattoos on Tyler’s arm burn in a way he never felt before, and some part of him feels guilty. But his worries melt away when Josh takes control, telepathic link long forgotten.  
  
They don’t discuss any of it, and Tyler suspects Josh has wanted it to happen for a long time – the kiss, and Nico’s death. He certainly doesn’t regret anything, as the ghost feeling of Josh’s lips keeps him tethered to the present moment. He wills his mind not to wander, for fear of losing it. He’s lucid enough to notice Jenna patting Mark on the back and telling him, “I told you so.” 

|-/

Waking up running in the middle of the woods comes as a shock, because he thought he was done with that, but apparently not. He’s winded, and his side hurts. He slows down and gingerly touches his lower abdomen. His fingers come back sticky with blood. It’s not gushing, so he tries to push the matter aside and focuses on the uneven terrain. After a while – how long? – he collapses in the snow. It’s undisturbed by any footsteps, and glistening in the morning sun.  
  
Just as he thinks about Josh, something starts vibrating in his pocket. He fishes out a crappy old phone and looks at it like an alien artifact. It keeps on rattling, so he presses a button and puts it to his ear, just to make it stop.  
  
“Uh?” he says, because there was no caller ID and he doesn’t even know if the phone is his.  
  
“Tyler?” Mark’s tinny metallic voice screeches into his ear. “Where in the hell are you?”  
  
Tyler looks around and thinks it does look like Hell, only frozen over. Maybe Purgatory. Maybe his soul is wandering the Earth and nothing can keep him in on place anymore. When he doesn’t answer, Mark changes tactics and asks him what he remembers.  
  
“Not much,” he breathes into the phone, suddenly afraid whoever was chasing him might hear him.  
  
“You were attacked. In town. Josh is okay,” he adds before Tyler can ask. “He says you did that thing of yours, and you sent him away? Anyway, he’s pissed right now, so you better not do anything stupid.”  
  
There is someone else talking on the line, and Mark shushes them. “Are you alone right now?”  
  
“Think so,” Tyler manages through clenched teeth; he’s very cold now that he’s not running anymore. Maybe sitting in the snow is not such a good idea.  
  
“Do you see anything around? Anything we could use to find you?”  
  
There is someone panicking in the background, and Tyler is grateful it’s Mark on the line, calm and concise, because if it was Josh he would start crying like an idiot. Instead he looks around and tries to ignore the wetness on his waistline. Nothing but trees, mocking and silent; no sound, no one in sight – probably for the best.  
  
“I don’t… I don’t see…” he’s not scared, really, he’s not, but he’s so tired that giving up sounds like an option. Lying down in the snow and letting sleep overtake him.  
  
“Can you hear DEMA calling?” Mark suggests, unexpectantly.  
  
Josh must have been talking, or maybe they discussed it with him present and he forgot it about it like the rest. It sounds reckless but it could actually work. He closes his eyes and focuses on the voices, in his head but not really, somewhere on the edge of his consciousness. He stays silent for a long time – or maybe it was only an instant – and then he just says, “Yes”.  
  
“Can you walk in that direction?” Mark asks. “We can meet halfway.”  
  
But Tyler is thinking about something else. In his mind, the noose becomes a leash, as he tries to fight DEMA’s influence. Pain doubles and triples. He drops the phone in the snow and joins it soon after. And he uses it all – pain, fear, submission; he ignites all those feelings in his head, sets his soul on fire, and for a moment he’s the one calling, demanding answers.  
  
But Nico doesn’t magically materialize next to him, and the phone eventually disconnects and shuts down – either because of the cold, the humidity, or because he stayed immobile for longer than he thought. He retrieves it and stands up, feeling drained, but clear headed for once.  
  
The unpredictability of his so called abilities is getting on his nerves – what’s the point of being a boy wonder if you can hardly control it. Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense; maybe his brain just feeds on emotion and throws up bursts of energy when it gets too much. So he tries to hear Josh, and focuses on that instead. He starts walking.

|-/

Through half lidded eyes, he can see the forest and the falling snow, but when he squints his eyes, and his eyelashes make it look a little not right, he can see beyond all that, and everything takes a different form. He sees teeth, seething, dripping blood, he sees glowing eyes, observing him, and he sees claws, tightly gripping tree barks. He blinks and all is gone, but he knows it’s there, just like he knows Nico isn’t gone, and DEMA will keep resurrecting.  
  
He doesn’t stop, and he tries to ignore how his head feels empty and light, or how the front of his jacket and pants are now covered in blood. He’s hugging his side, but there is not much he can do. Except walk, and wonder who will catch up with him first; Banditos or DEMA.  
  
He smells smoke, and he raises his head, trying to see who’s coming for him. Torches, somewhere farther into the forest, walking along the same path he’s traveling. He gets foolish and tries to scream, “Sahlo Folina”, because they would know what he means, but his voice is gone, reduced to a pathetic whimper that the wind promptly carries away.  
  
He keeps walking; what else can he do apart from collapsing on the spot. There are drops of his blood everywhere along the way now, and some rational part of him feels bad because Josh is going to freak out when he finds him. The torches are closer now; he can hear footsteps and voices, and it sounds like home. The knot in his stomach comes loose, and he breathes with relief when all he can see is khaki and yellow, surrounding him, holding him, supporting him.  
  
So he closes his eyes and lets familiar hands pull and prod. They are pushing the soaked jacket aside and pressing against his cold skin. A warm hand slips into his frozen fingers, and he grips it tightly. He swears there is something pulsing in his hand, up his arm, all the way to his heart. Warmth is coursing through his veins, and he hopes he’s not stealing anyone’s life force, because that would be a terrible ability to be unable to control. He trusts Josh to let go if that does happen, just like he trusts Banditos to patch him up. 

|-/

He regains consciousness to voices, but he’s not certain they are talking to him.  
  
“Can’t keep doing that,” they lament. “… not healthy.”  
  
“… much choice…” they argue, “… leave him?”  
  
And he wants to scream to the voices not to leave him, please, but he doesn’t have to, because Josh’s voice cuts through. “Just do something,” he demands.  
  
It sounds reasonable, and Tyler wants to hum to show his approbation. Maybe he does, because the angry voices quiet down, and there is a hand on his shoulder. It feels good to know he’s not alone.  
  
“… need to take it out,” he hears.  
  
He wants to ask what, but he doesn’t have time, because suddenly there are hands holding him down, and fingers wriggling inside the wound in his flank. The pain skyrockets, and he thrashes about, but the pressure is unrelenting, and he feels paralyzed. He’s more afraid about being drugged than being shot, it seems, because the mere thought of being chemically incapacitated makes him nauseous, even more than the lead slug taken out of his entrails.  
  
He bleeds and he pleads, “Don’t let me be gone.”  
  
And just like that, the hands disappear, until only the one on his shoulder remains.  
  
He’s lost and broken and maybe dangerous – he doesn’t mean it, he swears – but he knows they will be on his side, no matter what. He tries talking, but only nonsense come out – about falling off the grid, and what dying truly is. He knows that if his eyes were opened, they would be met with sad, blank looks.  
  
There are cars, and roads, and towns. Everything is a blur. Too much pain and confusion, too many fiery dreams. He’s pretty sure he has a fever now.  
  
“What more proof do you need?” someone argues. “He took a bullet.” (Did he?) “That is real enough.”  
  
“Begins with bullet now add fire to the proof,” he mumbles to no one in particular. But it isn’t right, it doesn’t make sense, because the fire part hasn’t happened yet, he shouldn’t know what’s yet come.  
  
They stop, once more. It’s late, probably. He’s burning up; his bones are on fire. Conversations grow angrier around him, and he tries to apologize, but he doesn’t even know what for. He flinches and guards his head every time someone enters the tent he’s lying in. Hands hold him down once more, and he can tell they are trying to be gentle. But then they seize his arm and the prick he feels in the crook of his arm fills him with dread.  
  
His body is too weak to fight back, but his mind is unleashed. He taps into that internal power he loathes and pushes them away. It works; they scream and retreat, leaving him all alone, shivering and confused, until the drugs take over and nightmares get the better of him.  
  
“… dangerous...” he hears.  
  
“What’s new?” And he recognizes Mark. The rest is all jumbled, they are too far away for him to hear.  
  
It’s morning now, and there is a tube in his arm, feeding him something cold that seeps into his bones and grounds him to the present. He is freezing, so maybe, just maybe, they are actually trying to fight the fever, and not to poison his mind once more. He wonders if they raided a local pharmacy for him; Josh and Jenna would do that, he’s sure.  
  
The tent is cold at night, but there are strong arms circling him, and a hard body pressing against his back. It’s weirdly intimate, even if both of them are fully clothed and Tyler is still pretty out of it. He can’t tell if Josh trusts him now, he can’t tell if he trusts himself, but he’s grateful for the touch.  
  
“You are free,” Josh repeats. “They are done. All nine of them are gone.”  
  
But it sounds untrue, and somewhere in his feverish head, Tyler can still hear _them_ calling for him.

|-/

Days pass – nights are still scarier that they should be – and they move the camp several times. The car smells like gas and ashes, and Tyler rests in the backseat, watching the back of Josh’s head. He wears a beanie, but Tyler knows his hair is very short underneath; he watched Jenna cut it, while he wondered if they could do the same for him. It looked liberating, and Josh’s head is soft now.  
  
Tyler half smiles and says through his teeth, to the back of Josh’s seat, “Release me from the present, I’m obsessing…”  
  
But he loses his train of thought and trails off. Josh taps his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, and eyes him through the rear-view mirror. A raised eyebrow, he’s listening, waiting for more. Tyler tries again, a bit louder, more assured.  
  
“You don’t know my brain, the way you know my name.” And Josh nods. “You don’t know my heart, the way you know my face.”  
  
At that, Josh hits the brakes and nearly pulls over. He shakes his head and twists around, reaching a hand and gripping Tyler’s.  
  
“You don’t know what I’ve done, I’m wanted and on the run,” Tyler continues, his voice nearly devoid of emotion. It’s merely a fact, a reality he’s accepted, without fully understanding it. He didn’t live it, he was told what happened, and he doesn’t remember any of it.  
  
“So I’m taking this moment to live in the future,” Tyler concludes, and he closes his eyes.  
  
Time is all messed up right now, and he’s half expecting it to collapse on itself, and to be back to DEMA, serving coffee and feeling dead inside. He has a fleeting thought for the vultures that must be starving, but then he’s back in the car with Josh. Now what?

|-/

Tyler opens his eyes and the car has burned. He’s lying in its carcass, now cold and blackened. He pats himself but all his injuries are old and on the mend; no burns anywhere. His head is soft and his hair short like Josh’s. His hands are covered in soot, and he stares at them for a long time, a material representation of madness, two diseased limbs he’d rather cut off than live with.  
  
Nothing makes sense, and he thinks he’s disappearing. Eyes don’t have a purpose anymore, he can’t believe his ears and he’s scared of his own head. Denial will only get him that far, now he needs to fight.  
  
He gets out of the car. The roof, the windows are all gone, and the seats are twisted and torn. He’s on a road, surrounded by trees, and the clouds are so gray and so heavy that it seems the sun is dead. He’s in the dark, has been for a long time. So he calls, for DEMA, for the ghost of Nico, for the shadowy figures that creep around in the forest.  
  
“Why won’t you speak?” he screams, and he’s standing cowardly, waiting for his death, waiting for _something_ to happen.  
  
When he turns around, Josh is there. Real and physically present, rooted in place, not matter how hard Tyler tries to hit his chest with his fists. But as soon as he blinks, Josh’s whole figure blinks out of existence, replaced by his old boss, wearing a twisted smile and a red apron.  
  
“Why won’t you let me go?” Tyler begs, even though he knows he’s probably standing in the middle of an empty road and talking to thin air. “Do I threaten all your plans?” he asks. “I’m insignificant.”  
  
“No,” a voice says, and Tyler can’t tell if it’s Nico’s or Josh’s.  
  
His head feels like it’s splitting in half, between the past and the present (future?). The phone that is not his insistently vibrates in his pocket, but when he pats his jacket, he finds that he’s not even wearing one. Snow falls and then it doesn’t.  
  
His lip is bleeding and he doesn’t remember getting slapped, but then _someone_ is grabbing his shirt (jacket?), and _someone_ is throwing him to the ground – to protect him or to finish him, he can’t say. He curls into a ball and tries not to whimper; he’s lost in between two places, where he used to bleed and where his blood needs to be.  
  
Shadows surround him now, nine of them, and he can’t see their faces; either because there is blood in his eye or because they don’t have any. He tries to tap into his powers, tries to mentally push them away, but it doesn’t work on figments of his imagination. It’s broken like the rest of him. This is not what he’s supposed to see.  
  
He looks down because he smells gas on his hands; this is not what he had planned, and this is exactly what he should do, because sometimes to stay alive you have to kill your mind. In a flash, he can see Josh putting the phone and a lighter in his jacket pocket. It happened, or it will happen, either way, he breathes with relief when his fingers close around the plastic casing of the lighter. He’s stronger with it in hand, and he can see the shadows waver in a moment of hesitation.  
  
“I will set my soul on fire,” he told (will tell) Josh, someday on the road, between two nameless towns he doesn’t care about or remember.  
  
And now the moment has come, so he flicks the lighter and lowers his hand until it touches the ground. Flames engulf him, and he smiles because he’s free at last.

|-/

He’s back in a car and Josh is by his side, holding him and talking, too fast for him to follow. Mark is driving. When did that happen? It’s the burned car; intact at the moment, but still smelling like gas and smoke. _What have I become_, Tyler thinks, and he mumbles a weak, “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be,” Josh says. “We’re winning,” he says, and Tyler hopes it’s not just wishful thinking.  
  
“Bankruptcy”, Mark adds, not looking back. “We’ll bury them in debt. We’ll break them financially.”  
  
They’re driving pretty fast, Tyler thinks confusedly. That must be the getaway he heard about but never felt like he lived through it. He tries to sit up, but Josh is not letting go.  
  
“Did–”  
  
“Don’t speak.”  
  
“Did something burn?” he insists.  
  
Mark and Josh laugh, but it’s a joyless laugh. It’s the laugh of two desperate people who are trying to make sense of an insane situation.  
  
“Yeah, you torched a shop. You nearly put yourself on fire.”  
  
“I will,” Tyler says, and nearly chokes because of the memories of what is yet to come, “set my soul on fire.”  
  
“And I’ll be there to put it out,” Josh swears with a squeeze.

|-/

Nico is talking, but only cobwebs and flies come out. This is not Nico. He is not there, nobody is; Tyler just set himself on fire, and yet he’s still standing, and ghosts are still tormenting him. They are still in the middle of the road, but _when_ remains a mystery.  
  
Maybe he’s dead and that’s what the afterlife looks like. Being frozen in time, prisoner of the worst possible moment of your life. The lighter is back in his hand, and he tries to hold it but his hand is shaking too much. Nico smiles but his eyes are dead.  
  
Nico is talking, but Tyler can hear a second voice behind his tongue somehow. Luckily he can read his mind, and what he finds underneath the lies makes him weep.  
  
So he blinks and the red apron disappears. He blinks again and the lighter falls. He closes his eyes because the flames are blinding, but the fire is not hot anymore. The yellow is beautiful, just like the tape on Banditos jackets, just like Josh’s hair a long time ago, just like the sun when it still existed, and blood and snow weren’t the only things left.  
  
Tyler burns, and then he burns no more. Josh says, “Try to love me and I’ll try to save you,” and Tyler doesn’t know what he can respond to such an offer. He’s beyond saving.  
  
And yet, Josh repeats, “Won’t you stay alive?” over and over like a broken record, but without a hint of desperation. He’s trying to coax him in the right direction.  
  
And then softly, because he’s close now, he has wrapped his arms around him, “I’ll take you on a ride.” That sounds nice; road trips are boring, and boring is just what Tyler needs. “I’ll make you believe you are lovely.”  
  
And this time Tyler doesn’t fall, because Josh never lets go.

|-/

The next fire Tyler sees is the one of the camp, down in the forest. He flinches, but doesn’t panic, because he can hear a chorus of friendly thoughts all around him, protecting him.  
  
“There were nine shops,” Josh says; he’s throwing twigs into the fire and watches them sizzle and burn. “Nine… monsters,” he says, for lack of a better word.  
  
“Demons,” Tyler supplies, but Josh doesn’t want to believe such a thing exists.  
  
“The company is finished, financially, materially.”  
  
“And I killed a man?” Tyler asks, warily. He remembers waking up with a bullet in his abdomen; he remembers burning; but he can’t remember killing someone.  
  
“Nico has been dead for weeks now. First town, in the coffee shop with a security guard,” Josh affirms, and Tyler doesn’t have to read his thoughts to know he’s telling the truth. Now that his mind isn’t hazy all the time anymore, he can recognize reality. This is real. It happened.  
  
“We went back. This time you didn’t send me away, but you took the gun from me and put a bullet through your boss’s head.”  
  
“And he died this time?” Tyler still can’t let himself truly believe. They cast out the ghost of his boss, and yet he clings to the fear that he might still be lurking around the corner somewhere.  
  
“Yep,” is all Josh says, because he’s probably repeated the story a lot already. But this time Tyler won’t forget.  
  
Jenna sits down on the other side, very close but not too close, and she smiles a mischievous smile.  
  
“I stole the medical examiner’s report. He’s _dead_-dead,” she confirms.  
  
“Let’s go home,” Tyler suggests, even though home is a place that doesn’t exist.  
  
But Josh seems to get the idea, and Jenna agrees. Banditos have been away from the city for too long now, constantly moving, and going back sounds like a project they can all get behind.  
  
Mark goes on about explaining how he can doctor some security tapes, alter records, and basically make them disappear altogether. Banditos will become ghosts, urban legend, and they’ll have time to regroup and start again.

|-/

On the road back, Josh hands him a newspaper he must have picked up at a gas station a while back. The front page reads, “_Local Man Goes on Rampage, Kills One_.”  
  
Tyler can’t help but chuckle, because he’s anything but local, and it feels like he killed Nico more than once. There is a black and white photograph of a DEMA shop on fire, and a blurry picture of what he assumes is him. He’s not wearing a ski mask, but the face is all wrong, the hair as well. He morphed. They don’t have anything on him. Relief and disbelief flood him.  
  
“You still got it, magic man,” Josh jokes; but he also looks relieved.  
  
They’re back in the van, back on the same road, with the same trees and the same snow, but everything is different somehow. They talk, and they laugh. Josh explains the plot of _The Exorcist_, and Tyler knows he’s pulling his leg, but he also hopes they’re not calling an old priest and a young priest when they reach the city. He is still scared of his own mind and what he can do with it.  
  
At night, his bones are held together by his nightmares and his frights, but also by Josh. There are sobs, in the dark, and more than once he wakes up fighting, but Josh never lets go.  
  
“You’re not alone,” he repeats, and Tyler confusedly acknowledges that maybe Josh needs him as much as he needs Josh.  
  
His head feels empty and quiet, and Tyler hopes it stays that way once they get back. Maybe if he could take a moment and hold it and keep it frozen, maybe he could have time to heal. For now he tries to remember the pit stops to steal popsicles and candy bars, and the movies Josh won’t stop talking about, and that life has a hopeful undertone.  
  


|-/

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly based on some songs from Vessel. It's a hot mess. A third part is being written. Please tell me what you think?
> 
> [Moodboard!](https://sarcasmcloud.tumblr.com/post/188023483267/on-the-run-and-go-tyler-is-free-from-the-coffee)


End file.
